Saratoga News

Photograph by George Sakkestad

After completing a 2,900-mile race across America, Mark Patten looks forward to many more hours of racing.

Bicyclist got 'a bit toasty' in race

By Miriam Eljas

Biking through the heat wave that killed a number of Texas residents didn't even faze Mark Patten. In fact, this former Saratogan and Saratoga High School graduate kept cycling through scorching temperatures that reached 114 degrees. Along with 21 other cyclists, Patten completed the 2,900-mile Racing Across America 17th Annual Extreme Cycling Championship, which stretched from Irvine, Calif., to Savannah, Ga.

"I got pretty toasty," says Patten, who took 10th place and received a gold medal for completing the race within 48 hours of the first-place winner. He says his biggest fear before the race, which began on July 23, was dehydration.

His attempts to stay nutritionally balanced fell flat--he lost an astonishing 30 pounds in the 10 days, two hours and 40 minutes that it took to complete the race. "I'm a junk-food junkie," Patten says. "After all those protein drinks, my stomach was all messed up, and I was craving regular food. People would run off and get me hamburgers and burritos, and I would scarf them down on the road."

Accompanying Patten on his first coast-to-coast race was a six-member crew of fellow bikers and friends. Everyone was trained to assist Patten in different ways, including mixing and properly passing out drinks during the race. Traveling along as a partial crew member was Patten's father, who videotaped segments of the trip. "My family thinks I'm crazy," Patten says, adding that he was glad to have some family support with him during his competition.

The van carrying the crew followed right behind Patten throughout the trip, serving as a kitchen, bedroom, and storage space for Patten's four bikes. His favorite, a Mongoose roadbike, was given by one of his many sponsors of the $12,000 trip.

Rest was virtually nonexistent for Patten, who says he didn't sleep a wink during the first three days of the trip. Only then did he take a catnap for an hour and a half, waking up every 15 minutes out of fear of oversleeping. It was another 30 hours before his next break--also a mere hour and a half.

The exhaustion took its toll on Patten, who began to have hallucinations during the ride. "I was so tired, and when you are that tired your brain plays tricks with your eyes. You just kind of have to chuckle to yourself and let it go," he explains.

This race has been a personal goal of Patten's, who has been looking forward to this test of his physical endurance with eagerness. "There were times where I was asking myself--why am I going through all this pain and agony? What am I doing this for?" Patten says. "But that was when it was really bad and I was uncomfortable. We fixed most of the problems, and by the end of the trip they were gone."

Roughing it is not new for the 38-year-old biker, whose daily schedule involves getting up at 4:30 a.m., exercising, working as a subcontractor from 9 to 5, then biking 70 miles and going to bed at 10:30 p.m.

Despite all his efforts to achieve peak physical condition, Patten explains that one cannot prepare in the traditional sense for races like these, because they demand superhuman strength. "Unlike most events, you can't really train for this; you'll only do more damage," Patten says. "You need to rest about six months between races of this length."

To be eligible for competition in his first cross-country race, Patten had to enter a 576-mile qualifier in Iowa during June 1997. Patten is no rookie racer, although he has only recently begun competing in the long-distance division. Patten attributes his involvement in cycling events to a friend who talked him into a double century, or 200-mile race, five years ago.

"I've been hooked ever since," he says. "Some people race only to finish, but I go in to win." A winning streak in Patten's racing history echoes his fighter attitude.

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